The Girl of his Dreams

that might sound like agreement.

'You still want to bother coming down here?' Steiner asked. ‘I can give you all the information on the phone.'

'No, it'll look better on my report if I can say I came down and talked to you about it’ Brunetti said, as if confiding in an old friend. 'Any chance I could talk to your men, too?'

'Wait a minute and I'll see who's here’ Steiner said and set the phone down. After a long time, he picked it up. 'No, both of them have gone off duty. Sorry.'

'Could I get the information from you, then, Maresciallo?'

'I'll be here.'

Brunetti thanked him, said he'd be there in ten minutes, and replaced the phone.

Because he was in a hurry, he didn't stop to tell anyone where he was going. It might be better, in any case, to visit Steiner alone, if only to make it appear to him that the police had no great interest in the death of the child and were merely trying to clear their records. Brunetti had no particular reason to want to keep information from the Carabinieri: his urge towards secrecy was entirely atavistic.

On his walk to the Carabinieri station, Brunetti's imagination conjured up a picture of Steiner as a kind of Tyrolean Ubermensch: tall, blond, blue-eyed, firm of chin and purpose. The man into whose office he was shown, however, was so short and dark that he must often be mistaken for a Sardinian or a Sicilian. He had black hair so dense and wiry Brunetti thought he would have the devil's own time finding anyone able to cut it for him. Strangely enough, his eyes were clear grey and looked out of place on his dark-skinned face.

'Steiner,' he said as Brunetti entered. The two men shook hands, and Brunetti, after turning down the ritual offer of a coffee, asked the Maresciallo to tell him whatever he could about the girl or her family.

'I've got the file here,' the Maresciallo said, picking up a manila folder and putting on a pair of thick-lensed glasses. He waved the file in the air. 'They're busy people.' Setting it down on his desk, he added, 'Everything's here: our reports, more from the squad in Dolo, also from the social services.'

Steiner opened the file; he picked up the first few pages and began to read: 'Ariana Rocich, daughter of Bogdan Rocich and Ghena Michailovich.' Steiner glanced at Brunetti over the top of his glasses, and when he noticed that he was taking notes, said, 'The file is yours. I had copies made of everything.'

'Thank you, Maresciallo,' Brunetti said and replaced the notebook in his pocket.

Steiner returned his attention to the papers and went on, as though there had been no interruption, 'Or at least those are the names on their papers. Doesn't mean much.'

'Fake?' Brunetti asked.

'Who knows?' Steiner asked in return and let the pages flutter to his desk. 'Most of the ones we have here come from ex-Yugoslavia: they've come in with UN refugee status, or their documents are from countries that don't exist any more.' With a finger that was surprisingly long and delicate, he pushed the folder forward on his desk, saying, 'Some of them already have Italian passports: been here so long. This bunch, though, came from Kosovo. Or said they did. No way of knowing. Probably doesn't make any difference, anyway. Once they're here, there's no getting rid of them, is there?'

Brunetti muttered something, then asked, 'You said that your men brought other children in with her.' Steiner nodded. 'Same parents? What's their name? Rocich?'

Steiner leafed quickly through the papers and placed some to the side, face down. Finally he pulled one out and read through it, then said, 'There are three of them. That is, this girl Ariana, and two others.' He looked up and said, 'You know we can't keep records for children, but I asked around: that's what's in here.' At Brunetti's nod, Steiner went on. 'My boys told me they've caught her twice, both times during a burglary.' Brunetti knew that no one under the age of fourteen could be arrested by the police, only taken into protective custody until they could be returned to their parents or the adult in whose care they were. No records could be kept, but memory was not yet illegal.

'The other two kids,' the Maresciallo continued, 'belong to the same family – at least the same surname is on their papers – though with them you never know who the real father is.'

'Do they live in the same place?' Brunetti asked.

'You don't mean in a house, do you, Commissario?' Steiner asked.

'Of course not. I mean camp. Do they all live in the same one?'

'It would seem so,' Steiner said. 'Outside of Dolo. It's been there about fifteen years, ever since things fell apart in Yugoslavia.'

'How many people are there?'

'You mean in that camp or altogether?'

'Both, I suppose.'

'It's impossible to say, really,' Steiner answered, removing his glasses and tossing them down on the open file. 'In the camp, there can be from fifty to a hundred, sometimes more if they have a party or a meeting: a wedding or some sort of celebration. The best we can do is count the caravans or the cars and then multiply by four.' Steiner smiled and ran one hand through his hair: Brunetti thought he could hear the noise it made. 'No one knows why we use that number,' Steiner confessed, 'but we do.'

'And in total? In Italy, I mean.'

This time Steiner ran both hands through his hair, and Brunetti really did hear the noise. 'That's anyone's guess. The government says forty thousand, so it could be forty thousand. But it could just as easily be a hundred thousand. No one knows.'

'No one counts?' Brunetti asked.

Steiner looked across at him. ‘I thought you were going to ask if no one cares,' he said.

'That, too, I suppose,' Brunetti answered, no longer feeling so distant from the man.

'Certainly no one counts,' Steiner said. 'That is, they count the people in the camps, if you can call what we do counting. And then they count the camps all over the country. But the numbers change every day. They move around a lot, so some never get counted and some get counted more than once. Sometimes they move when it begins to be dangerous for them to stay in one camp.' Steiner gave him a long look and then added, 'And if you'd like me to say something I shouldn't say, I'll add that the people who see them – or who want them to be seen – as a danger to society tend to count more of them than people who don't.'

'Why is that?' Brunetti asked, though he had a pretty good idea.

'The neighbours get tired of having their cars stolen or their houses broken into or having their children beaten up in school by the kids from the camps. That is, the ones who go to school. So groups, or you could call them gangs, start to form outside the camps, and if the number of nomads in the country is a high one, then these groups feel justified in wanting to get rid of them. And they begin to make life uncomfortable for them.'

Seeing that Brunetti was following his explanation, he decided not to describe how life was made uncomfortable and went on, 'So one morning there are fewer campers and fewer Mercedes. And for a while no one breaks into houses in the area and their kids go to school and behave better while they're there.' Steiner gave Brunetti a long look and then asked, 'You want me to speak frankly?'

'It's what I most want.'

'Another thing that makes them move is if we start coming around too often with their kids, bringing them back after we've found them in houses or coming out of houses or walking around with screwdrivers stuck in their socks or in the waistbands of their skirts. After we've brought them back five or six times, they move.' 'And then what happens?'

'They go somewhere else and begin to break into houses there.'

'Just like that?' Brunetti asked.

Steiner shrugged. 'They pack up and move and continue living as they always have. It's not as if they've got rent or mortgages to pay or jobs to go to, like the rest of us.'

'It sounds like you have very little sympathy for them,' Brunetti risked saying.

Steiner gave a shrug. 'No, it's not that, Commissario, but I've been arresting them and taking their children home for years, so I don't have any illusions about them.'

'And you think people do?' Brunetti asked.

'Some do. About equality and respect for culture and different traditions.' Much as he listened for it, Brunetti could detect no hint of sarcasm or irony.